MIDLAND prisoners are being ferried to police cells more than 120 miles away in west London because overcrowding in local jails has reached an all time high.

MIDLAND prisoners are being ferried to police cells more than 120 miles away in west London because overcrowding in local jails has reached an all time high.

Charles Bushell, general secretary of the Prison Governors Association, revealed eight local inmates had to be moved to the capital on Monday night because Birmingham Prison, in Winson Green, and Blakenhurst, in Redditch, were at bursting point.

The prisoners, mostly on remand, were taken from Solihull and Birmingham to be held in police cells or court cells in London, even though these rooms are only designed to keep prisoners for a maximum of one or two hours and lack basic facilities.

Mr Bushell warned the same thing could happen again tonight when the number of people locked up, which is already in excess of 80,000 in England and Wales, is expected to reach a record high.

"No society should lock up more people than it is able to hold," said Mr Bushell. "It needs to check what's going on. We are running out of space.

"For a long time now the Government has been enacting legislation to lock more and more people up for longer and longer times, but nobody has thought to build the prison spaces to provide for them."

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service at the Home Office said prisons nationwide were "very full" and latest weekly figures from last Friday showed the prison population was at its highest of 80,778 with 416 of these held in police and court cells nationwide.

She added: "The National Offender Management Service is dealing with pressures on the prison estate by building more capacity. A new capacity-building programme will deliver 8,000 new prison places by 2012."

Local Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming said: "This is due to bad planning by the Government and the fact the Government's mathematics is inadequate is something everyone suffers from.

"They are locking up people they shouldn't and not locking up people they should."